reported this week<\/a> he would have Solomon \u201cfirmly in consideration for this job\u201d.<\/p>\nFox Footy host Sarah Jones was surprised by the report, saying on Thursday Night Footy: \u201cyou\u2019ve got to run a process – you\u2019ve got to line Solomon up against the best candidates across the board.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect Hird to do well in that process, but you can\u2019t just install Solomon as the coach, particularly given they\u2019re (Solomon and Welsh) such close friends, you need to prove to the world if he is the guy, it\u2019s all on merit.\u201d<\/p>\n
James McDonald gets harassed by Andrew Welsh and Dean Solomon during the 2004 elimination final – Essendon\u2019s last finals win.Source: News Corp Australia<\/p>\n
Geelong great Cameron Mooney added: \u201cIf he (Welsh) stakes his claim to Dean Solomon and it doesn\u2019t work, then he\u2019s gotta go too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Solomon\u2019s hiring would be somewhat surprising given he has only been an assistant coach, for about one season\u2019s worth of games, across two jobs over the past five years.<\/p>\n
After taking the interim Essendon role, Solomon said he had no interest in the full-time job while the season was ongoing, saying: \u201cI think it\u2019s really the wrong thing to do for me to entertain any thoughts around that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got to knuckle down – my last 48 hours (after Brad Scott\u2019s departure) has been chaos. I actually don\u2019t have the capacity to take that top spot on at the moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt won\u2019t be in-season \u2026 I might struggle, or dislike the role, so who knows \u2026 I won\u2019t consider it in-season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Solomon was briefly an assistant coach at Fremantle after his retirement from the AFL, then joining Gold Coast\u2019s inaugural coaching staff, where he was an interim coach for three games after the 2017 sacking of Rodney Eade.<\/p>\n
Solomon was overlooked for the full-time job in favour of Stuart Dew, but remained at the Suns until the end of 2020 when he was let go.<\/p>\n
He then took a part-time assistant role at GWS, along with Hird, in 2022 under their ex-teammate Mark McVeigh who was the interim coach following Leon Cameron\u2019s mid-season departure.<\/p>\n
Giants coaches James Hird, Mark McVeigh and Dean Solomon during the Round 14 AFL match between the GWS Giants and Western Bulldogs at Giants Stadium on 18th June, 2022. Photo by Phil HillyardSource: News Corp Australia<\/p>\n
Solomon then made the unusual move from the Essendon board (a role he was serving while living in NSW) to the assistant coaching ranks late last year, with some reports of tension between Solomon and former coach Brad Scott during this season<\/a>.<\/p>\nHis only other experience as a senior coach came while leading the Tweed Coast Tigers in the QFA Division 2 South between 2023 and 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Essendon president Andrew Welsh is \u201cendorsing\u201d former board member and now interim boss Dean Solomon as the next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-729595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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